A typical mobile computing device, or simply “mobile device,” such as a smartphone or tablet computer, includes a computation subsystem, and a display screen configured to display a user interface (UI) comprising elements such as control widgets and representative images of files accessible through the UI. A representative image may comprise a thumbnail image associated with an application, script, or data file residing within a file system or file database. One example of a representative image is an image thumbnail. Another example of a representative image is a file icon. Representative images are typically presented to a user within a collection viewer that is configured to allow the user to browse, select, view, execute, and otherwise interact with corresponding objects. One example of a collection viewer is a file browser, which may be configured to show users a list of files within a file system depicted as icons. Another example of a collection viewer is an image browser, configured to show users a list of images within a file system or image database depicted as thumbnails.
A UI for a mobile device typically includes a collection viewer for files and may include a collection viewer for images. A collection viewer for digital images may similarly present thumbnails associated with digital images residing within an image database or within a file system folder of digital images. The collection viewer enables the user to browse thumbnails, and to open a digital image by performing a touch gesture on a corresponding thumbnail.
Mobile computing devices, or simply “mobile devices” may include an arbitrarily large number of files and corresponding icons that need to be presented within a collection viewer for files. Similarly, mobile devices may include an arbitrarily large number of digital images and corresponding thumbnails that need to be presented within a collection viewer for digital images. Typical collection viewers enable users to view a collection of representative images as a two-dimensional grid of representative images. The representative images are conventionally positioned within the grid according to a specific sequence, such as a file sequence number, a sort sequence number, or an image sequence number. The grid is populated with representative images frequently forming a tall, narrow form factor regardless of device orientation. Width of the grid is associated with horizontal screen width, which may be different in landscape versus portrait orientations. As a consequence, the physical location of a specific representative image may change when device orientation changes because the collection viewer typically needs to alter the grid layout and specific sequence of the representative images.
In conventional operation of a collection viewer, the user may locate a desired representative image by scrolling the grid vertically into an appropriate screen position. However, if the user then rotates their mobile device, the screen position of the desired representative image typically changes in response to the change in grid width, forcing the user to once again locate their desired representative image within the grid. Forcing the user to locate the desired representative image a second time after rotation introduces inefficiency and confusion in the user experience.
As the foregoing illustrates, there is a need for addressing this and/or other related issues associated with the prior art.